A quick note to all my readers and followers: I have relaunched my blog, and it now lives at www.philredbeard.com. I am hosted by wordpress, and it includes all my previous blog posts, poems, and other content. I will not be posting here any more, and all future posts will be over there. Go give me a follow and let me know what you think. So long, and thanks for all the fish!
In Recognition of the All Stars
This past week, on July 13th, Major League Baseball held the 91st playing of the All Star Game. Set against the Rocky Mountains of Denver, Colorado, the game itself entertained and showcased Shohei Ohtani, a Japanese “two-way” player (two way referring to his dual roles as pitcher and designated hitter). Ohtani represented the Los Angeles Angels of the American League, but you’d be forgiven for missing that, a fact we will return to shortly for more discussion.
The night before, I thoroughly enjoyed the Home Run Derby, an exhibition of some of the game’s most powerful hitters, and while Ohtani participated and made the first round very exciting, he did not win. It always amazes me each year that the Derby manages to be as entertaining as it is. I convince myself that players hitting home run after home run on pitches basically lobbed into the strike zone won’t be fun to watch, but each year I prove myself wrong by becoming absorbed in the spectacle.
I always enjoy the All Star break in the middle of the baseball season, and look forward to seeing the year’s best players from each league competing together for the pride of the win and the fun of the game. I can remember past All Star Games and Home Run Derbies and the great players that assembled to reward the fans with some incredible moments. It is something special to see them all lined up on the foul lines, announced one by one, and knowing that some will be in the Hall of Fame and wondering which others might be inducted into Cooperstown in the future.
One aspect in particular that I always enjoyed each year was seeing the uniforms of each team displayed against each other. I really love the visual of a player from the Boston Red Sox playing with a player from the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles. Or a New York Mets’ player with a Milwaukee Brewers’ player. I love to see the colors, the logos, and the styles all mixed onto two teams.
This year, however, fans of the game were robbed of that particular visual. Major League Baseball decided to design and have the players wear two uniforms, a home and an away jersey, and have them be worn during the All Star Game. In previous years, jerseys have been designed and worn, but only during All Star batting practice, the Home Run Derby, or other events. During the game itself, the players wore the uniforms of the teams they represented.
Which brings us back to Shohei Ohtani. Instead of the red Angels’ uniform he usually wears, he wore a dark blue uniform with large red letters on the chest and a blue cap. And so did every other player for the American League. The National League uniforms were white, but with the same large letters across the chest. The only concession to the different teams was the fact that each team had their own logo superimposed on three letters that abbreviated their city of origin. Really, the jerseys were hideous. They were badly colored, oddly designed, and not really aesthetically pleasing at all.
Really, the look of the jerseys was secondary. Except for knowing that Ohtani was from the Angels already, I couldn’t have picked out what team he came from based on sight alone. The three letters for the city were totally obscured by the logo, which itself was hard to distinguish, but even with that difficulty, it was the same jersey that Jose Ramirez of the Cleveland Indians wore, and it was the same jersey that Vladimir Guerrero of the Toronto Blue Jays wore. It was even worse as later in the game less familiar players were substituted for their chance to shine. Only they didn’t, because they blended into every other player on their respective teams. It was very frustrating, distracting, and disappointing. That night they showed up in ugly blue or all white. No variation. No distinction. No celebration of diversity.
Maybe that is what bothers me the most, here a week later as I am writing this: the lack of diversity being celebrated. Baseball is America’s game, some say, and it should represent America. People sometimes say that America is a melting pot, where everyone is the same and equal. Sadly the people who live here are not treated equally, but beyond that, America is not a melting pot, a sludge of a single color. It is a cacophony of differences and hues. Just like baseball usually is during the All Star Game: Cincinnati red next to Oakland green next to Royal blue next to Pittsburg black next to San Fransisco orange next to Arizona whatever-color-they-are-this-week.
It wasn’t just that the uniforms were unappealing to me. It was that they were all uniform. And they shouldn’t have been. I truly hope that Major League Baseball doesn’t repeat that mistake next year and into the future. A quick skimming of social media showed that I wasn’t alone in my assessment of the game and its displays. In 2022, the All Star Game will be held at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and while I truly hope that those All Star jerseys are much better designed, I hope too that I don’t see them during the game. I want to see that Dodger blue script on a white field with a red number for the home town Dodger players. It’s an iconic look and should proudly be displayed, alongside every other of the twenty-nine teams’ uniforms that are currently a part of Major League Baseball.
After all, its all part of the pageantry of baseball: the flash of home runs being launched into a summer night, the snap of a baseball into leather, and the excitement of the game’s best competing against the game’s best. It is what makes the Midsummer Classic a, well, a classic game out at the old ballpark. And that is what I want to see each year.
Glorious Purpose
I feel stuck. Immobile. Mired. I do not much care for this state of being.
Lately I have been watching the series Loki on Disney+. It is a great continuation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the story of that universe’s version of the Norse God of Mischief. The title character is discovering all sorts of things about himself, and growing in so many dimensions as a person.
Loki’s catchphrase, introduced in the first Avenger’s’ film, “I am burdened with glorious purpose” comes to haunt him in a very unique way throughout the show.
That same idea, that “glorious purpose,” has come to haunt me lately. I don’t know if it is because of my once and future depression, or a symptom my covid infection that refuses to go away (I have come to suspect that I still suffer some mental effects from my bout with that virus back in January of this year). I don’t know if it is just garden variety laziness, or some other yet undiscovered malady. All I know is that I, like Loki, am burdened with glorious purpose….but I am unable to do anything about it.
The God of Mischief doesn’t have my particular problem. His affliction is that he seems doomed to fail. The audience of his show have yet to see if that will out once more in the ultimate episode, or if Loki will yet succeed, for once, in his journey. I, too, am in the middle, or maybe even at the end of the beginning, of my journey. I suppose it depends on how much of this life I am fated to live. Anyhow, I, like Loki, haven’t yet lived my last days.
Which brings me back to glorious purpose: what am I to do? Or, better yet, how am I to find the motivation to do it? I don’t know. Loki found a better part of himself in his journey that is dragging him up from his depths. Maybe I need such an impetus to drag me up. Perhaps. I somehow don’t think my problem is external. There could be some new drug, or treatment, or therapy, or thing that could pull me onwards, but I doubt it. I think my trouble in internal. I think inside of myself is both problem and solution.
In digging deep, I think I can discover my cure for, and ignition towards, my glorious purpose. Loki discovers that his glorious purpose is a diversion, a limiting factor. He saw he was doing it wrong all along. By trying to live up to some high ideal, whether crafted by himself or thrust upon him by station, he was already failing. But by following his own path he found his true glorious purpose: simply being himself.
That realization could be my salvation. I may need explore within and reconnect with who I, Phil RedBeard, am, and was, and will be, and embrace that fully. I am already doing some of that here. I am writing, and that has always seemed to be my first, best destiny. Suddenly I am not sitting around scrolling social media without purpose.
I am moving forward. I am achieving. And it is a heady feeling; I like this feeling. It’s almost as if I have met my true glorious purpose at last. Loki would be proud.
Ease of Use
I have notice something about myself: I need things to be simple.
I’ll give an example: I don’t drive a standard, or manual, transmission car. I technically know how, but I won’t do it. It is too complicated. Mash this pedal while shifting this knob and not letting up on the gas while steering and maintaining a lane. Nope. Too much happening. I would much rather the car handle the transmission while I steer and adjust the speed. That I can handle.
That brings me to my latest purchase: a Bluetooth keyboard for my iPad Air. I have a traditional computer, but I use it primarily, really only, for work. Sitting there to write a blog post or something else feels too much like work. Plus, it isn’t a laptop, so I can’t take it anywhere I want to go. For these reasons, and a few others, I haven’t really sat down to write that much on the computer. The iPad, while mobile, suffers as well from a variety of issues that for me just don’t make it easy to sit down and start writing. Thus I just haven’t written much. The price of entry is too high.
My new keyboard is a seenda, not a brand I have known or heard of; it was an Amazon find. It is backlit and has a few other great features, but the best part is it makes typing, and therefore writing, easy and uncomplicated. Without making this a product review, I love everything about this keyboard. From the moment I paired it with the iPad and started to type, I knew this was the keyboard to get me writing again.
At the moment I am writing in the WordPress app while watching a baseball game using the picture-in-picture mode of the MLB.TV app. I’m sitting in my easy chair while my wife crochets next to me. It is wonderful. I am so happy writing right now. The flow of this blog post makes me hopeful that regular writing can again be a part of my life. Honestly: I’ve missed it. If this keyboard can bring that back it will be worth way more than I payed for it.
Ease of use is very important to me. Solving the complicating factors standing in the way of something I love is a major win. And I like winning. (Speaking of which, my team needs a win. Currently they have lost 9 in a row and are down 3-1 in the game. C’mon, Cleveland!).
A New Hope
Someone once said, "Inner emptiness is not a void but an engine of possibility." I’m less sure. My hollow bones are no raging krayt dragon. Instead: a bleached skeleton in the Wastes. Destitute droids roam by in search of home while I lay thirsty and long since dead of any ambition, a desperate howl in the desert. What I need is a whisky Jedi to lend my corpse a cause, some damn fool idealistic crusade would do, anything to get my fighting blood astir. Maybe my Jundland is territory to be traversed? Could a broken old speeder carry my spirit to Eisley in search of a wretched hive of hope and potentiality? If so, come Lord Kenobi! Help me, as only you can! Together could we find redemption, a watering for our beleaguered souls?
I’ve been feeling very dead and dry inside lately. A lack of motivation rules supreme. For instance: today I slept most of the day. I didn’t feel particularly depressed or down, but I just couldn’t find that spark to get me going. I’m not proud of it, its just what happened. My sensei of sorts, Adam Savage, has a saying that “This is what is happening” which means that you need to embrace what is instead of inviting frustration or other negativity about what you wish could be. So I slept.
Having to work this afternoon kind of broke the spell of nothingness and got me going a little. I listened to a few upbeat songs just before my shift, and that got me going a little more. Then I started thinking. And then I wrote a poem in between working. I don’t know if it is a good poem, I don’t concern myself with that. I simply try to write the best damn poem I can at the time. And I don’t usually explain my poems, but I thought that maybe this time the exercise of explanation would do me good, so here goes:
I read a poem recently, and forgive me, I don’t remember where or I would quote and link to it. But the epigram for my poem is a paraphrase of that verse’s main idea. That poet said that our skeletons house a vast emptiness, but the turn was this idea that instead of being empty, we are full of untapped potential.
I feel dry inside. That always makes me think of deserts, those beautiful tracks of desolation that cover large portions of the rocky part of our planet. Deserts make me think of Tatooine, the all-desert planet from Star Wars. And from there my thoughts started to race with the Star Wars metaphors. My skeleton became that of the krayt dragon that R2-D2 and C-3P0 trudge past in the beginning of the first Star Wars film, A New Hope. “Wastes” refers to the name of that Tatooine desert, the Jundland Wastes.
That “desperate howl” is the noise that krayt dragons make when on the hunt, and which Obi-Wan Kenobi imitated to scare off the Tuskan Raiders who were assaulting Luke Skywalker. That leads naturally to Old Ben, who here is a “whisky Jedi”. That idea comes from Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, a story about a “whisky priest” that is, a drunk priest who struggles with doing his priestly duties and searches for redemption. I imagine that Obi-Wan is doing the same thing while hiding out on Tatooine and protecting young Skywalker. I wonder if, like he energized the bored Skywalker into his career as a Jedi, maybe Kenobi could do the same for me.
That phrase “blood astir” references another poem “Vagabond Song” by Bliss Carman in which the speaker says that “there is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir” by which is meant that the fall climate and trappings fires up the need to wander. I’ve always loved that poem, and here I bring in that idea that I need to be roused and my longing for an Obi-Wan Kenobi-type to set me ablaze.
From there I begin to wonder if maybe my desert, again the “Jundland Wastes”, is merely a time to be traversed and not a permanent dwelling. I call to mind Luke’s rusty X-34 landspeeder and the spaceport he and Kenobi raced to, Mos Eisley. I turn the tables though on that seedy city, a “hive of scum and villainy” as Kenobi calls it, instead reimagining it to be a hive of “hope and potentiality” as it really was a place that launched Kenobi’s resurgence and Luke’s emergence onto the galactic stage.
Finally, I liken Obi-Wan to a Christ-like figure of redemption, both his own as “whisky Jedi” (further tying in the religious aspect of The Power and the Glory) and mine from the desert inside my bones.
There you have it then. Just now, writing the poem and the explanation was exorcitive (did I just invent that word? I mean it was an exorcism of my soul). I feel loads better just having that out there and working through it in the writing for any who may read this poem and explanation. I don’t know, maybe it will do you good as well. I hope so.
Glimpse of Mortality
I’ve been close to death before, but it was quick. A move of desperation, grim faced and full of rage, daring the Reaper to take me. Then I rushed to my senses and swerved to safety.
But this past winter, I was made to stare into my own mortality and really contemplate the end. I was made to live with the knowledge that each labored breath could be my last, that if things went sideways or southwards, I’d be headed for my end.
I was one of millions who contacted the Covid-19 virus and it sent me to the hospital. I had survived a year of mask wearing and lockdowns and restrictions, but at the turn of the calendar, I got sick. One dark night, I tried to go to sleep. I have sleep apnea, and wear a cpap mask to keep my airways open. But even with that, I couldn’t fall asleep. Even with that positive air pressure being forced into my lungs, I couldn’t grab a breath. Into the night, sitting up in a recliner, I labored to breathe.
Eventually I texted my wife, unable to get enough breath to shout up to the bedroom on the second floor. Eventually I woke her up, and told her I needed to go to the Emergency Room. All the way to the hospital, I felt fear take hold. Unlike my previous suicide attempts, when I desperately wanted to die, this time I desperately wanted to live.
All year, I had seen the death toll rise world wide. I had read and heard stories of healthy people succumbing to this virus that sometimes seemed innocuous, and sometimes seemed vicious. I began to be terrified that I would never leave the hospital alive.
We arrived, and I sat alone in the waiting room, struggling to breathe. My wife wasn’t allowed to sit with me, to reduce the risk of infection to those healthy of the virus. Fear settled in to stay. Eventually I was taken back for a few questions and tests. I was given oxygen and a wheel chair. I could breathe easier, but inside I was still gasping, grasping for a hold on the moment.
After forever, I was taken to a room on the ER floor. An oxygen feed kept me breathing. After a bad night during which I didn’t sleep a wink and was reduced to deep indignity (no nurse was available to unhook my IV and in desperate need of relief, I shit my pants and pissed all over the room floor and still waited 15 minutes for help and a janitor to clean up my mess). But that was nothing: I was being admitted with a severe case of covid.
What followed was a week in which I was sequestered by myself in a hospital room on the fifth floor. A friend visited, but we talked on the phone and saw each other from 30 feet away through a window in the wall. He wasn’t allowed closer, being a nurse himself caring for covid patients. I couldn’t see my wife, and could only call her. I still can’t imagine what that week was like for her, alone and herself afflicted with a milder case of the virus.
I spent my long hours staring out of the window, watching the weather and thinking. For the first time in my life, I really contemplated the fact that I could die. The doctors, not seeing improvement, started me on steroids and a powerful drug (I don’t remember what it was called) to try to fight the infection. I was so scared, though I put on a brave voice for my family when they called. I kept thinking that healthier people than me had lost their battles with covid.
Eventually, after a few days, I did start to get better. In the end, I spent a full week in the hospital. I was discharged on oxygen and with a bucketful of meds, healthy enough to finish my recovery at home. I was finally reunited with my wife. It felt so good, though I was weak and still finding it hard to breathe.
It has taken me much longer to recover psychologically. Thanks to my doctors and the medication, my body got stronger and I could surrender the oxygen and I could walk up the stairs without getting winded. But the fear has only recently loosed its grip on my heart and mind. With my covid vaccine, I now am starting to feel that I might live a while yet.
No longer will I take life for granted. Never again will I tempt the Reaper. I know now that my life is precious. It could flee from me at any moment, after all, I could get into a car accident tomorrow, or something else could happen. The permanence of life remains an illusion.
But I deeply appreciate my life now in a way I didn’t before. I am gentler with myself, more accepting of my flaws and foibles. They aren’t as important or devastating anymore. I have been given a perspective I lacked before. I was flat where now I feel dimension. And all it took was a real look into the specter of nothingness. I wouldn’t wish covid on anyone. I wish I never had that experience, but I cannot deny the change it made to my life. It has taken me months to publicly talk about it in this way. But I find it important to acknowledge what happened.
I feel my life has begun in a new way since January. I feel I am living a renewed existence. And it feels good. Life still hurts and is confusing and messy and frustrating, but at least for now, I am breathing. And that’s not nothing.
One of those days when I was just lying in my hospital bed, I wrote a little poem. It isn’t anything profound, but I find it beautiful, and it is these little moments of beauty that I live for now. Life isn’t guaranteed, never was really, so I am about catching the little moments of beauty while they last.
The city,
wreathed in steam,
dominates only a small portion
of my windowed horizon.
An industrial plateau stretches ‘round.
What I took for a flock of birds,
frozen in the sky:
dirt on the windowpane.
Low winter clouds buttress the sky above,
grey and bleak and lit from far away.
- view from A5110
On the Enjoyment of Baseball
I’m watching the Oakland Athletics currently running the table on the Boston Red Sox from Fenway Park. It is 4-1 in the bottom of the sixth. I came into the game in the fifth inning, and after a little bases-loaded merriment, Boston failed to score. A lead-off home run in the top of the sixth led to Oakland’s fourth run.
Baseball is in full swing for the 2021 season after a shortened season last year due to (what else?) Covid-19. I didn’t watch much of the truncated 2020 season. Depression, worries about the world, and restlessness kept me from enjoying my favorite sport.
This year, having survived my own bout with the coronavirus, I feel newly alive, and with that my passion for the best game on the planet reignited. My team hails from Cleveland. I watch them every day that I can, usually catching at least half the game. Then I like to drop in on any game or interesting matchup still in progress. Today I watched Cleveland beat the Chicago Cubs 2-1 in the bottom of the tenth; then I caught part of the San Diego Padres at the Colorado Rockies; and now the A’s and the Red Sox. It’s been a good day of baseball.
Baseball, I argue, is the most exciting, most nerve-wracking, most enjoyable sport to watch for those of us not blessed to play it. But I’ve had a bit of a revelation about the nature of the game. This year I have watched two separate no-hitters. One was almost a “perfect” game, but a hit batsman reduced that to a mere no-hit bid. Regardless, the game was stellar from the pitcher’s mound and the defense behind it. Yet that game wasn’t that enjoyable. It was certainly exciting and nerve-wracking, especially as I followed every pitch, every swing of the bat, every spinning hop on the infield as the ball gyrated toward a defender ready to send it hurtling toward first base and (hopefully) another out. But enjoyable? Not really.
I would rather see a game with a mounting tally of hits, guys with infield dirt smeared over their uniform pants and jerseys, and plenty of crooked numbers on the score columns of each inning. Looking back on all the baseball I’ve watched, the games which made me laugh out loud in pure joy were the ones in which the ball was being smacked all over the ballpark, and I don’t mean home runs, either. Sure, those are majestic. Seeing that white and red-stitched orb being absolutely crushed into the summer evening to land in the upper deck is exciting. However, I again argue it isn’t really that enjoyable, for all that it does launch a crowd to its feet to roar for their mighty hitter. It is possible, after all, to win a game 1-0 behind a stellar pitching performance and with exactly one hit, a home run. That kind of excitement lasts long enough for the home run hitter to touch all the bases, but once he returns to the dugout, what do you cheer for?
Give me a game in which there are stolen bases, sacrifice bunts, shots in the gap, doubles, and balls slapped down the line from both teams. Sure, the pitchers’ stats will take a serious blow, ERAs will be sky high, like the fly balls that ricochet off the wall. But when a baseball bounces around the outfield corners like a recalcitrant youngster avoiding the recess bell, all the while a runner tears around the bases throwing up dirt like a thoroughbred at Churchill downs – that’s enjoyable baseball. When a guy dives headfirst, fingers outstretched, desperate to catch a corner of home plate so that his team can edge ahead of their opponent – that’s enjoyable baseball. Catchers like squat powerhouses muscling balls into the outfield to keep the offensive line moving or like armored tanks firing lethal projectiles toward second base hoping to gun down speeding devils intent on thievery? That’s enjoyable baseball! That kind of baseball will make the crowd chant, cheer, and roar their throats raw. Nine innings of that makes the fans positively euphoric.
A perfect game is like a well executed masterpiece of writing perused while sipping a fine Chardonnay. (I guess. I don’t drink Chardonnay.) But a 8-7 affair with plenty of running, hitting, and wild plays? That’s like a dime-store adventure novel that you can’t wait to read again as soon as you’ve finished it. You wear out the pages on those books just as the runners wear out the base paths trying to score home. One may be an exemplar, but one is arguably more enjoyable.
All my growing up days, there was exactly one scenario I dreamed of: two strikes, two outs, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded. What happens next? A grand slam to walk off with the win. But how do you get there? One, by being down by three runs, and two, by loading the bases. That means plenty of hits and runs, not 27 outs, one after the other. I never once dreamed of throwing the final strike of a perfect game, that’s for sure!
So maybe you do drink wine and enjoy Crime and Punishment or whatever Russian masterpiece is collecting dust on a bookshelf. Me? Give me the Hobbit one more time with a bunch of filthy dwarves hunting for dragon gold. Give me a hit and run with one out followed by a double in the gap. You can keep your perfect game. It’ll be one for the history books, but I just might be having more fun at the ole ballpark.
(Boston lost, by the way. Just couldn’t string together enough hits. Now I’m headed to DC. The Washington Nationals are trying to beat the Philadelphia Phillies in extra innings.)
Best of: 2020
Look, 2020 has been a helluva year. I get that. I won’t enumerate all that has gone wrong this year, because we’ve all lived it and it’s still too soon. And that’s why I want to discuss my best things. Positivity never goes out of style and can’t be beat for long. So with that in mind, here is a brief accounting (in no particular order) of my top objects and experiences from 2020.
Best Of
#1: iPad Air 2
Inherited from my dad, this 9.7” glass and aluminium wonder has helped me create and do many other awesome things. Shoutout to Apple for designing a smashing bit of hardware and software. The Air 2 isn’t the latest and greatest, but it does the job and it is still solid. I just love it for watching my favorite YouTube channel, Tested, in the evenings, or playing Scrabble, or editing photos. Eventually I will upgrade to the newest iPad Air (in green! and with an Apple Pencil) but for now, this thing really rocks.
#2: Canon SL3
Using the one and only pandemic stimulus check I received, I paid off some debt and bought a new DSLR: a Canon SL3. I have yet to really put it through its paces, but already it has proved its worth. I love the flip-out screen. It takes beautiful, high quality photos and is a joy to use. Plus it looks great; I got the white camera body and hoo boy is it snazzy. I want to purchase a few additional lenses for it when I can afford them, but for now the 18-55mm it came with is adequate for most of what I use it for anyway. Shoutout to Canon for a quality camera.
#3: The Mandalorian
Debuting at the end of 2019, the Mandalorian is a fantastic space western. Set in the Star Wars universe soon after the events of Return of the Jedi, the show follows a lone Mandalorian bounty hunter on his way through the galaxy. Season two debuted in October of this year and has just completed. I watched it every week as it was released on Disney plus with my wife. It is certainly the highlight of our week and something we look forward to. The production value is sky high, the acting is superb, and Baby Yoda, who we recently learned was named Grogu, couldn’t be cuter. I love everything about the show, and it has done what all good entertainment should do: given me an escape from the occasional dreariness of life on Earth and rocketed me off into a galaxy far far away. Shout out to Dave Filoni, Jon Favreau, and all the women and men creating that show.
#4: The Mandalorian
No, I’m not repeating myself. I’m talking about my Black Series 6″ action figure. Somewhere in 2009 or 2010 I started taking pictures of some 3.75” Star Wars action figures. I don’t even remember where or why I got the original two figures, two stormtroopers who I named Kyle and Kyyle, but I started taking pictures of them as a way to have fun. Through several years I took hundreds of photos. It was a ton of fun and a creative challenge. At least two years ago I started to collect Hasbro’s Star Wars Black Series action figures with an idea to restart taking stormtrooper pictures. While I have taken several photos, I haven’t done so on the scale I used to. But this year I acquired a Mandalorian action figure and it is beautiful, well articulated, and just plain fun. Shoutout to OT Customs for an awesome cloth cape for my Mando action figure, purchased via eBay. It really looks great and elevates my humble Mandalorian action figure.
#5: Tested
I’ve been a fan of Adam Savage since his days on Mythbusters, and towards the end of that show’s run, Savage joined a small startup called Tested. Tested has become centered around Adam Savage and his obsession for making things, usually prop replicas or costumes for cosplay, but really just about anything he dreams up that he possesses the skills and materials to make. Since Covid 19 forced everybody into lockdowns and social distancing, Savage took to self recording One Day Builds and other videos alone in his shop. Watching his videos on YouTube has been a high point of each and every week, and this fall I took the plunge to become a patron of the channel for a few bucks a month. This allows me access to behind the scenes and exclusive videos, which is well worth the price of admission. Shout out to Savage’s editing crew.
#6: Art
I battle depression each and every day. I started a project for 2020 that I had no idea would come to define a really bad, no good year. My wife crochets constantly, and one thing that she showed me is a mood blanket. Comprised of various colored squares that represent various moods, it allows the maker to create a blanket that reflects their state of mind over a period of time.
I don’t crochet, but I do paint. So I took a 16×20” black canvas and divided it up into one inch squares, each square for a day of the year, excluding Sunday’s. I then assigned different colors to different things: blue for depression; silver for productivity. Green for reading or writing; red for artistic endeavors and photography. Yellow for LEGO fun; purple for special days. The idea was to assign each day a color based on what I did that day and track how many days my depression kept me down, or how often I accomplished something, and what. At a glance I could see how 2020 was going and have a map of my mental health. 
I started in January, having no idea what 2020 would bring. It has been fascinating to see the year unfold on this mood painting, and also to see how few days I actually was unable to master my depression. There are plenty of blue squares, to be sure, but way more of the various other colors. I am so glad to see that I have an upper hand on my depression and also that 2020, bad as it has been, has been unable to join with my depression and overwhelm me. My mental health remains a daily challenge, but it is not my master. I will have this painting as a perpetual reminder of that fact. Shoutout to my wife for a fantastic idea.
Christmas?
I am posting this 6 days before the big winter holiday, and while I may receive some awesome stuff under the tree, I didn’t want this to become a “what I got for Christmas this year” list. I think to really appreciate something you’ve got to live with it for awhile and use it and have it enter your life. Each of the things on my list have done that and earned a “best of” label.
And certainly this is not an exhaustive list. I could have added many things here, among them a little leather journal that my wife bought me and that I use for recording the odd poem. I don’t write nearly as much as I should, which is why it didn’t make the list, but it is a fantastic little journal.
Wrap-Up
I’d be interested to hear your best of 2020. Send me an email and let me know what brightened your year. As I said, there is plenty of 2020 to feel bad about, so let’s all focus on what there is to feel good about. I am sure there were at least one or two things that made 2020 not quite so terrible.
Thanks for reading. May 2021 be kinder to us all.
Mercy For My Dreams
There is a song that I love about a sailer and a rolling ocean. The sailor is alone at sea amid an angry storm. He is frightened, and doesn’t know where safety lies. Part of that song says
“…give me mercy for my dreams
‘Cause every confrontation seems
To tell me what it really means
To be this lonely sailor”
I think about that song, and that part in particular, a lot. “Give me mercy for my dreams” is a powerful statement. The sailor had dreams of sailing the ocean, but the ocean turned on him, tried to kill him. He needed mercy because his dreams grew large, turned terrifying. Mercy because now the sailor now only wants to survive. Dreams had vanished to be replaced by crashing waves.
The singer of the song identifies with the sailor, identifies with overwhelming dreams, identifies with the loneliness of a vast and powerful ocean that is trying to kill the hapless sailor.
I have dreams. Dreams beautiful and vast. And most of them have turned on me, become terrible and mortally terrifying. I have struggled much, and sorrowed much, over my dreams, dreams for which I need mercy. I have been and continue most days to be that sailor, adrift and alone.
And if the song stopped there, then it would confirm my fears that there is no hope and no escape and no rescue and no safe harbor. But that isn’t the end. The song continues to say
“I should have realized
I had no reasons to be frightened”
and
“And when the sky begins to clear
And the sun it melts away my fear
I’ll cry a silent weary tear…”
Storms don’t last. Skies clear. The sun shines above black clouds and through lightning strikes and thunder blasts. Eventually the sun breaks through that darkness and seas calm. Then the speaker realizes that they’ve endured, they’ve survived. Message? Dreams can survive.
Storms can last a long time, and I feel as if my boat is still rocking and roiling. But all storms must end. I am holding on to the sides of my boat, pulling my slicker closer, and wiping rain from my brow. After all, the refrain of the song has become my anthem:
“But I am ready for the storm, yes sir, ready
I am ready for the storm, yes sir, ready”
You see, storms can kill. The idea isn’t that the sailor is foolish to be frightened, but that once the storm ends and he is alive, then he can rejoice in life renewed. The idea is to be ready for the storms, because they will arise. Every time, waves will surge and hurricanes will rage. But if I am ready, then maybe I can weather the storm.
How?
“It’s an angry sea but there is no doubt
That the lighthouse will keep shining out”
What is the lighthouse?
“And when you take me by your side
You love me warm, you love me…”
“And you will find that in the end
It brings you me, the lonely sailor…”
Love. Love can calm oceans of doubt, despair, and overwhelming depression. Lonely sailors simply need a steady, surmounting lighthouse that will shine out despite all and through all, guiding the sailors back to safe harbor.
I was thinking of this song and dreams, because I had a brief encounter over social media today. I responded to a celebrity post asking “Have you committed to following your dreams?” and I said “yes” not really thinking about it. Then the celebrity contacted me, and I am sure many others who answered, asking “How do you manifest your dreams?” and I really had to ponder that. I don’t have a solid reply. I said “I go after what I want and don’t look back” but the truth is that while I often launch my boat and head certainly out to sea, when the seas grow large I often flounder. I want to look back; I want to head back.
But I have love. And love keeps me sailing, love keeps shining out, guiding me in the right direction. When I need safety, I can find it, because I have love. Love doesn’t always look the way I want it to, doesn’t always feel like I want it to feel, but it is there, often right in the boat with me, a steady hand on the tiller and a strong arm on the ropes, tacking the sails.
In the end, I am ready for the storm. So give me mercy for my dreams, because once again I am headed out to sea.
The Old Man and the Nautilus
My grandfather died.
He was 85, a man of the mountains; a man of the sea; a man of family.
I only knew him as an older man, partially crippled by several strokes. Strokes that he worked to overcome, despite odds to his detriment. He walked with a limp and a cane. He once upon a time drove a fiery orange ’76 Corvette with T-tops and a snarling engine, out-racing state troopers from the alpine roads of West Virginia and Ohio through Kentucky to the beach flats of Virginia and beyond.
I only knew he was a sailor. Later in life he would cruise the Ohio river, and yet he never forgot his maritime roots. A plank from a submarine, that once sailed beneath the briny blue, hung above his computer. Nautical themed kitsch littered his house. He served America’s NAVY proudly for many years aboard such mighty ships as the Nautilus, the Finback, and the Daniel Webster. “‘Cat and mouse'” he always said with a wink. “We played ‘cat and mouse’ with the Russians.” There were stories he could not tell, even when I knew him, stories of running silent and deep, of far flung harbors and a cold war now dead. Stories that now sleep with him and Davy Jones.
I only knew him behind large rimmed glasses, with a smile, and a NAVY veteran’s hat. He came from the coal hills of West Virginia, deep in the Appalachians. He was a die-hard fan of the Thundering Herd of Marshall University. A little part of him died in ’70 when a plane crashed and killed the team. I remember him cheering for Chad Pennington, who never made it in the NFL, and Randy Moss, who did, once upon a chilled homecoming. I remember him seated near the gridiron end-zone, watching the boys play football, decked in green and white.
I only knew him as a quiet, thoughtful man. He would sip his coffee with the morning paper and an open bird guide, watching his winged visitors and looking up the ones he hadn’t yet seen. After cutting grass, washing that magnificent ‘vette, and grilling burgers, we sat and watched the sun set behind West Virginia’s hills till dusk was deep and the deer came to forage. He taught me how to complete a circuit and light a bulb, an old salt with some solder and wire. He gave my family our first, and second, computers. A Commodore ’64 that launched my brother’s career, and an old 386 that launched my digital games. It was from his generosity that I first touched the tendrils of the world.
I only knew my grandfather as a grandfather. You may have known a different man than I, and I cannot speak to Charles Edward Martin. But as for me and GrandPaw Martin, I loved him and I will miss his presence upon this earth. I will never look out upon the ocean without thinking of him, that old man and the Nautilus that knew him when.
down the dusty road 